"What a delicious thing writing is. . ."

I ease a dusty Madame Bovary off of the bookshelf. I love this novel and decide to read it again. In the Foreword, I read how Gustave Flaubert felt about the act of writing. He writes in a letter, "What a delicious thing writing is--not to be you any more but to move through the whole universe you're talking about."

Flaubert describes inhabiting the characters and "riding in a forest on a fall afternoon beneath the yellow leaves." He allows himself to become the "horses, the leaves, the wind" and the "red sun beating on [the characters'] half-closed eyelids."

Sometimes, in the business of writing, we forget the deliciousness of writing.

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My students don't often enjoy writing. One of my goals is to help them love it. Do you enjoy writing?